EA Ulm advice wanted - Page 2

Edi · #1 February 24th, 2007, 06:51 PM

No, not as bad. Worse.

Covenant · #2 February 24th, 2007, 07:17 PM

Ick. And I know there IS an Agartha in the upcoming game.

This lack of Cavalary or shield use is really pretty distressing. If I use massive amounts of the Warrior Maidens, who seem to have much better accuracy than the cheaper archer gals, would flaming arrows be a must? Seems a tad risky to bet so hard on such an easily negated form of combat, but like I said in the beginning, Ulm is really pretty hamstrung in EA.

Edi · #3 February 25th, 2007, 02:56 AM

Troglodytes are size 5 tramplers and have far better morale than elephants, but not as many hit points. 47 is still tough, though.

Flaming arrows is good, but you need a fire booster to get it going. Fortunately the shamans have FEDN randoms so it's just a matter of time before you land one who gets both F and D from those, allowing you to make a skull of fire for one of your F2E1 warrior smiths. If you put a F9N4 bless on your steel warriors, they can and will hurt anything that comes up against them rather brutally. An air bless would not be bad either, because the steel warriors WILL be taking fire from archers, both enemy and your own.

Massed warrior smiths and strong evocation is the way to go. Something like trogs and elephants are really NOT going to like magma bolts, fireballs, and magma eruption and blade wind is a staple.

One of the strengths of EA Ulm is that even though its mages are not very powerful, they are very versatile. Also, except for your mountain, iron and steel warriors and warrior smiths, all of your units are stealthy and every single one of them has both mountain and forest survival. So you have excellent raiding potential. Lots and lots of scouts should give you eyes to see and warrior chiefs with lots of archers and warrior maidens should make for good raiding groups that can take care of most PD garrisons easily since the otehr players will be using their money for mages and troops.

You will probably want to take at least some production scale since EA Ulm needs lots of troops quickly and that requires comparatively more resources than money.

Edi

PvK · #4 February 23rd, 2007, 09:14 PM

Elephants can squash anything smaller than themselves almost no matter what it is... until they get hurt and panic and trample their own men.

Bunches of archers are one counter that can work...

PvK · #5 February 23rd, 2007, 09:18 PM

EA Ulm can be very powerful, especially early on before they have to worry about nasty magic.

Of their national troops, I prefer the female warriors with shields (skilled, shielded, good value for gold and resources), and archers. Armored archers in front of unarmored archers.

Blessable two-handed sword guys can be good too, especially depending on the blessing.

The axe throwers can be ok - a blizzard of axes can be deadly, but they are vulnerable.

Warrior Smiths are of course nice. Sometimes they can make nice combat participants in various unexpected ways.

PvK

Covenant · #6 February 23rd, 2007, 09:59 PM

PvK, what sort of blesses are worth stacking on their sacreds? And what function to the Warrior Smiths have? I usually just made as many standard Warriors as possible (10/10 is as cheap as Ulm gets, really). When I was playing against AI's, a F10 bless on the Steel Warriors was good at slicing right through Glamour, but I felt it may have been overkill.

Edi · #7 February 24th, 2007, 03:58 AM

A low level nature bless on the steel warriors makes them a lot more durable since regen reduces the chance of afflictions by a large margin. It's especially good since they don't have shields.

I also used primarily warrior maidens and archers in absolute masses. First unarmored but later armored archers, and hordes of warrior smiths. The best kind of battle mage warrior smiths are the E3, E2F1 and F2E1 types, because when you give them earth boots and a girdle, they will be brutal at casting blade wind, magma eruption and fireball respectively. Magma eruption is easily my favorite of those, it REALLY gets rid of the annoying enemies in quantity even if they have shields.

Shamans and antlered shamans are good for casting panic and those should be the best against big low morale things like elephants.

Edi

Saxon · #8 May 14th, 2007, 10:32 AM

Howdy,

So, it seems agreed that EA Ulm does not like elephants and many of their units are less than ideal. Let us get to the good stuff, what are they good at!

Seems to me that you need high scales for this nation, as gold and resources are most helpful. Their mages are not too exciting, but do have a range of paths and a forge bonus. I was thinking of researching conjuration and building up some thugs with cheap items.

Nature seems the only path you can get going without a pretender, so the usual Thistle Mace, empowerment, Gift of Health and mass protection have worked for me before. Others mentioned Panic. What other combat type spells can you roll out with this nation?

Where do you see taking this nation after the initial expansion?

johnarryn · #9 May 14th, 2007, 12:06 PM

EA nation is a very strong nation, in my opinion. Steel Maidens are very strong with good defense, protection and attack.

Warrior Maidens are powerful archers...

In midgame, you should focus on diversifying your magic through constant site-searching to find powerful independent mages. Your steel maidens, shield maidens and warriors maidens can take most other nationals on a troop-for-troop basis... spells like flaming arrows, blade wind, strength of giants and others can help even the odds against tougher nations. Use your stealth to your advantage, raiding if you must... hiding in your own territory to confuse the enemy about your numbers is also helpful.

PvK · #10 May 14th, 2007, 02:32 PM

I've been able to get practically all the magic paths I want with EA Ulm, even without pretender magic. They have plenty of random paths and can cheaply forge boosters.